JEFF EDELSTEIN: Santa is coming to Bordentown schools; Jesus (and all other deities) still aren't

A few weeks back I wrote a column applauding the powers-that-be at the Bordentown Regional School District for deciding to remove a trio of over-the-top religious songs from the playlist at the annual winter concert at the MacFarland Intermediate School.

Let’s do the background first to get everyone up to speed: A few weeks ago, a pair of parents informed the principal of MacFarland a trio of songs for the 4th grade winter concert — “The Kings From The East,” “Gloria” and “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” — were way too over-the-top religious to be included in a public school setting. (Sample lyric, from “Gloria” goes like this: “Every knee will bow down, every tongue will say out loud, that you’re the king and maker of all.”) The principal went to Superintendent Constance Bauer, who went to the lawyers, who advised the nixing of the music. So the music was nixed.

The Facebook group pages of Bordentown City and Township flared up with a lot anger. An online petition to bring the music back was started at Change.org. Over 250 people signed it.

Advertisement

A week or so later, other news organizations and websites picked up on the controversy, culminating with a story on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, with O’Reilly calling Bauer a “pinhead.”

Then the Alliance Defending Freedom got involved. They’re an Arizona-based group that “directly litigates strategic cases to protect religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family.” The group is for religious displays on public land, against gay couples adopting, opposes civil unions …basically, they are — in their words — a “legal ministry to help practicing attorneys successfully defend and reclaim religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family.”

Anyway, they fired off a press release.

Then two days later — last Friday — it appeared the Bordentown Regional School District braintrust pulled a 180 and decided to allow the songs back in the concert. A posting appeared on the district’s website, signed by the superintendent, which read, in full: “In reviewing additional legal considerations and advice on this matter and the expressed sentiments of the community at large, I have reconsidered the decision on the musical selection for the upcoming winter programs so that pieces with traditional and historical religious origins will be permitted.”

The people who wanted this music to stay in celebrated online in Facebook groups. A lot of “we did it’s!” abounded. News organizations reported the music was back in.

Well …

The music is not back in.

I got my hands on the official song list (as of this moment, at least) for the 2013 MacFarland Intermediate School 4th grade concert. Here it is: “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Hanukkah Song,” “Let It Snow,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Deck The Halls,” Winter Fantasy” and “In This House Tonight.”

In short: Santa is coming to Bordentown, Jesus is not.

And to be clear: For the parents who brought up this issue in the first place, this was all they were after. Not to take Christmas away; that’s insane. It was simply to take overtly religious material out of the public school.

Now according to court rulings, the three songs that were knocked out (and remain out) could be part of the concert. In a nutshell: School districts can do whatever the heck they want to do. A school district can include religious music if they like, don’t have to if they don’t want to. People have sued their school districts from both sides of the issue, and both times, the courts —3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia and the United States Supreme Court— upheld the view that it’s up to the school districts and the communities. (More or less. I’m sure there’s a lot more to the decisions, but I’m not a legal scholar.)

So while the choice rests in the hands of the community, we should, as I mentioned in my last column, be careful what we wish for. Right now, the United States is 78.4 percent Christian, according to a Pew Research study. Only 4.7 percent of Americans are of another religion, with the other 16.9 percent claiming atheist (1.6 percent), agnostic (2.4 percent), or “nothing in particular” (12.4 percent), with the rest refusing to answer.

So based on those numbers, it’s easy to feel like it’s no big deal to sing songs praising Jesus in public school, mostly because the vast majority of people are Christian. But what if Christianity becomes the minority one day? What if 78.4 percent of the nation was Muslim? (And yes, I’m making the same point I made last time. Skip ahead to the next paragraph if you want.) Put on your empathy shoes and imagine a winter concert featuring lovely, non-religious songs about Santa Claus, dreidels made of clay, songs about non-religious celebrations like Kwanzaa and the like, and then a solid block of music dedicated to praising … Allah. Would you want your non-Muslim child participating in that school-sponsored, taxpayer-funded event? Under the court rulings, school districts and communities would have every right to have those songs be part of the concert.

Now please note I’m not (at all) saying Muslim = bad; I’m just pointing out the quicksand that this issue becomes once you switch out the dominant religion in the equation.

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause,” wrote George Washington.

So is this controversy over? Not by a long shot. Nov. 13 is a Bordentown Board of Education meeting. I expect more acrimony.